Weather Thread

[Ryan Ruck]

Was one of those marks a brown one in the driver seat?

[American Patriot]

Was one of those marks a brown one in the driver seat?

You might say that. The passenger seat... I was driving. LOL

[Malsua]

I carry a window breaking tool and seat belt cutter in all my cars in the map pocket on the doors.

I've never tried it, I hope I never need it.

[American Patriot]

Generally, lightning doesn't weld the doors shut. LOL

[Malsua]

As for kicking out the window...he wasn't trying hard enough.

[American Patriot]

I think I could have kicked a side window out without any trouble. I've broken a couple windows without even TRYING before......

[Malsua]

I think I could have kicked a side window out without any trouble. I've broken a couple windows without even TRYING before......

I've put my fist through a side window before(wasn't feeling much pain at the time). I have no doubt I could do it with my foot.

[American Patriot]

No doubt whatsoever a leg muscle can put a foot through a side window of most vehicles.

I saw Dad once do some kind of "hammer fist" thing to a side window and pull a guy out of a car through the hole he left. It wasn't pretty lol

[American Patriot]

Florida braces for first tropical storm of hurricane season

Associated Press July 01, 2014

National Hurricane Center


Potential path of the storm as projected at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.




MIAMI — A tropical depression that formed off the coast of Florida is expected to strengthen and soon become the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.
The depression’s maximum sustained winds Tuesday morning are near 35 mph (55 kph).


A National Hurricane Center forecast predicts that the storm could affect New England’s coast over the weekend.



A tropical storm watch is in effect for Florida’s east coast from Fort Pierce to Flagler Beach. The depression is centered about 95 miles (155 kilometers) southeast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s been nearly stationary over the last few hours but a northwestward motion is expected to begin later in the day.


Meanwhile in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Elida is meandering off Mexico’s southwestern coast. Elida’s maximum sustained winds are near 50 mph (85 kph) with some weakening forecast.


A tropical storm warning is effect for Mexico’s coast from Lazaro Cardenas to Cabo Corrientes.


Related:

• Slow hurricane season predicted
• Study: Tropical cyclones migrating out of tropics

[American Patriot]

Bastardi: ‘potential nightmare.. a tropical cyclone coming at the outer banks on the July 4 weekend’

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Anthony Watts
UPDATE: Latest GFDL model output suggests Bastardi could be right, see below.
The Case for Rapid Development Feedback of a Potential Tropical Storm: Arthur.



NASA Satellite image of the disturbance off the east coast of Florida at 8:40am.



Guest essay by Joe Bastardi, WeatherBell Analytics.



In the old days, one never had to worry about anything but hitting the forecast. But times have changed. With an agenda out there to take any weather event that attracts attention and turn into into a reason that an AGW driven atmospheric apocalypse is upon us, one has to make sure the physical grounds are stated before hand for why the event can occur.


We are faced with a potential nightmare.. a tropical cyclone coming at the outer banks on the July 4 weekend. I already have this as an 80 knot storm by July 4th, right on top of the North Carolina coast. That represents the mid ground of a fear this can be stronger. The post Sunday on Weatherbell.com on this outlined why. To refresh your memory, a look at the ECMWF 200 mb pattern Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, indicates why this can deepen so much, and as a matter of fact is in a prime area to do so.
The Wed AM outflow channel is developing to the northwest, with north winds on the east side. The storm position is marked by the X on the map below:



Thursday morning:



Finally, Friday morning…Even here it is still in the “upward motion” quadrant of the jet to the north (right front entrance) though by this time the best conditions start to fade. But by this time the center has battered the outer banks.



The seawater, like the end game of the last AMO in the 1950s, is very warm along the east coast.




from: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomwnc.gif



Again this warm seawater is a product of the natural cyclical function of the AMO in its mature stage.


You can read about that here: http://patriotpost.us/opinion/26136


As I posted on it, and the Weatherbell.com preseason forecast outlined our great concern about in close development/intensification this season, a product of the overall climatic pattern we are in (again similar to the 1950s).


Storms coming to the coast in their intensification stage will often use frictional effects to feedback and intensify. A large powerful , mature hurricane in the same position might weaken, its expanse and interaction with the trough causing an extensive area of rain cooled air to be pulled in to the storm. But a smaller storm may actually intensify, since it is not yet large enough to pull in the rain cooled air and the frictional affects, may tighten the bands up. The large scale pattern that may weaken a major storm, may be conducive to deepening a smaller one.


Look at it this way. If you have 2 people, one used to 3000 calories a day, one used to 1000 calories and they sit down to a 2000 calorie meal every day for a week, the larger person would lose weight, the lighter gain weight. The common thread of this is rarely recognized in storms. But the smaller the storm, the better the chance it can deepen. Think of Katrina approaching Florida as a small storm with ideal conditions for development.


She deepened right to the coast. But when she got very large, a cat 5, in the same place the much smaller Camille in 1969 was a cat 5, she started to weaken, while Camille maintained the core winds right to the coast. My point here being that what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander, and this storm has alot going for it.
Lets take a similar example: Hurricane Alex in 2004 which battered the outer banks and was worse than the forecast from official sources had, with wind gusts over 115 mph reported.


The track of Alex in 2004:



Alex exploded in 42 hours from a 35 kt minimal TS to 85 kt storm. Notice the similar 200 mb pattern:


00z Aug 2 2004




00a Aug 3 2004




00z Aug 4,2004




By the way, a storm in the article above, Gerda in 1969, also “exploded” up the east coast in spite of interaction with an approaching trough. A first, with smaller storms, these troughs help ventilate the storms in the northwest quad. The smaller the storm, the tougher the forecast situation.


In addition, El Niño seasons are known for in-close deepeners. The strongest May storm on record in 1951 was Able, in a warm ENSO. Audrey was the strongest storm on record in June, 1957. Interestingly enough, in El Niño seasons, many of the first storms are strong ( more examples Betsy, 1965, Alicia 1983, Andrew was coming off the 91-92 El Niño and 2004 was an El Niño season, the year of the aforementioned Alex!


But if this does explode (again we have been on top of this…) the first alert for the HURRICANE threat on the outer banks to clients, then public followers, was Saturday), it has nothing to do with .04% of the atmosphere. It has everything to do with the physical reality of the pattern, which we have seen before. Since we see a similar set up, we have to be on guard against a similar event.


There is nothing mystical or magical about it. That it would grab headlines of a major resort area on arguably the biggest summer holiday of the season, means the threat of spinning it for an agenda is there. I cherish the day when the only kind of spinning we have to deal with is what the atmosphere does, not what people using the atmosphere for their agenda spin it for.


There is a why before the what in a case like this if it does deepen, and it has nothing to do with global warming/climate change/AGW.


UPDATE: Latest GFDL model shows the speed, position, and central pressure forecasts for Friday, July 4th.

[MinutemanCO]

I saw Dad once do some kind of "hammer fist" thing to a side window and pull a guy out of a car through the hole he left. It wasn't pretty lol

My Dad's done similar things to those who decided they wanted to give a load.

Marines...

[Ryan Ruck]

Forecast for my area Tuesday looks... foreboding.

Can't say I've ever seen that descriptor before.

[American Patriot]

Foreboding..... how... dark. An apprehension of fearful bad omens.....

Don't tempt the lightning.....

[Ryan Ruck]

They've now updated the "dangerous" to just "severe".

[American Patriot]

Wouldn't that be "down-dated"?

/confused

[Ryan Ruck]

Weather ended up being the exact opposite of "dangerous" or "severe".

Just a little bit of wind and it barely rained.

Meh.

[American Patriot]

Poor man’s polar vortex to make shocking summer return in eastern U.S. next week

• By Jason Samenow
  
  
• July 10 at 10:35 am
  
  

Click to enlarge. (WeatherBell.com, adapted by CWG)

Call it the ghost of the polar vortex, the polar vortex sequel, or the polar vortex’s revenge. Meteorological purists may tell you it’s not a polar vortex at all. However you choose to refer to the looming weather pattern, unseasonably chilly air is headed for parts of the northern and northeastern U.S at the height of summer early next week.
Bearing a haunting resemblance to January’s brutally cold weather pattern, a deep pool of cool air from the Gulf of Alaska will plunge into the Great Lakes early next week and then ooze towards the East Coast.
6-10 day temperature outlook from National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center

Of course, this is July, not January, so temperatures forecast to be roughly 10 to as much as 30 degrees below average won’t have quite the same effect.
Temperature anomalies (or difference from normal) Tuesday midday from European model (WeatherBell.com)

But make no mistake, in parts of the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest getting dealt the chilliest air, hoodies and jeans will be required. Highs in this region could well get stuck in the 50s and 60s – especially where there is considerable cloud cover.
GFS model forecast highs Tuesday (WeatherBell.com)


Wednesday morning’s lows may drop into the 40s over a large part of the central U.S. Remember, this is July!
GFS model forecast lows Wednesday morning (WeatherBell.com)

The heart of the chilly airmass will probably just skirt the East Coast, but temperatures are likely to be about 10 degrees below normal. Highs may struggle to reach 80 in D.C. next Tuesday and Wednesday with widespread lows in the 50s (even 40s in the mountains).
GFS model 7-day forecast (WeatherBell.com)

(Note, as with any extended forecast, there is some uncertainty here. If the cool air mass loses some punch, highs may still reach 80-85 around D.C., with lows in the 60s, rather than the 50s)
The pattern may last only a few days, but will probably set some records, especially around the Plains and Great Lakes – where water temperatures are still depressed from the frigid winter in which ice remained on Lake Superior into June.
What’s behind this unusual winter weather pattern primed for the dog days of summer? A lot of it is simply chance (randomness), but Weather Underground’s meteorologist Jeff Masters says Japan’s typhoon Neoguri is playing a role in the pattern’s evolving configuration:

….the large and powerful nature of this storm has set in motion a chain-reaction set of events that will dramatically alter the path of the jet stream and affect weather patterns across the entire Northern Hemisphere next week. Neoguri will cause an acceleration of the North Pacific jet stream, causing a large amount of warm, moist tropical air to push over the North Pacific. This will amplify a trough low pressure over Alaska, causing a ripple effect in the jet stream over western North America, where a strong ridge of high pressure will develop, and over the Midwestern U.S., where a strong trough of low pressure will form.

What amazes me most about the pattern is not so much the forecast temperatures, but the uncanny similarities in the weather patterns over North America seen in both the heart of winter and heart of summer. All of the same features (refer to the map at the top of this post) apparent in January are on the map in mid-July: low pressure over the Aleutians (blue shading), a large hot ridge (yellow and red shading) over the western U.S., the huge cold low or vortex over the Great Lakes (blue and green shading), and then the ridge over northeast Canada (yellow and red shading).
It’s not at all clear what this means or what, if anything, it portends. Weather patterns cycling through a certain circulation regime can repeat (and we’ve seen this pattern multiple times since November-December), but with El Nino forecast to develop, the global configuration of weather systems is likely to change.
Related: Extreme Great Lakes ice extent could portend cool summer for eastern U.S.
As news of this cool air episode breaks, you may notice meteorologists bickering over whether this is a “polar vortex” event or not. For their part, several National Weather Service offices are using the term. Writes the National Weather Service forecast office in State College (it’s technical, but note the text I’ve bolded and underlined):
THE HIGHLY ANOMALOUS AMPLIFICATION OF THE LARGE SCALE PATTERN IS A VIRTUAL LOCK BY THE END OF THE PERIOD AS INDICATED BY ALL MEDIUM RANGE GLOBAL NUMERICAL MODELS AND ENSEMBLE SYSTEMS. THIS WELL- ADVERTISED HIGH MERIDIONAL EVENT WILL FEATURE A FULL-LATITUDE RIDGE AND SEARING HEAT OUT WEST…NOT BE BE OUTDONE BY THE RETURN OF THE POLAR VORTEX IN THE EAST OVER QUE/ONT AND THE UPPER GREAT LAKES. CONSIDERING THE MAGNITUDE OF THE UPPER LEVEL TROUGH WITH 500MB STANDARDIZED ANOMALIES ON THE ORDER OF -3 TO -4SD IN BOTH THE DETERMINISTIC GLOBAL MODELS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE ENSEMBLE MEANS…CONFIDENCE IN A PERIOD OF BELOW AVG TEMPS /DURING WHAT IS CLIMATOLOGICALLY THE HOTTEST TIME OF THE YEAR/ IS VERY HIGH FROM TUE-THU OF NEXT WEEK.
And look at this graphic released from the National Weather Service forecast office out of Chicago:

But Larry Cosgrove, an energy meteorologist, says that while the looming cool air mass is “admittedly impressive”, calling it polar vortex event is hogwash.
“It’s insane,” Cosgrove wrote on his Facebook page. “Poor wording combined with misunderstanding of the term make a mockery out of synoptic meteorology.”
Cosgrove’s argument is that air mass doesn’t meet the “polar vortex” standard – its pressure isn’t low enough and the air isn’t sufficiently cold and truly Arctic in origin (i.e. not below freezing at 5,000 feet). “[On] TWO counts we fail to reach the standard for calling such an upper low a vortex,” he says.
Related: What the polar vortex is and is not, in one graphic | A deep dive into the polar vortex
I’m taking the middle road here; hence the headline of the post – a “poor man’s polar vortex”

[Ryan Ruck]

But Larry Cosgrove, an energy meteorologist, says that while the looming cool air mass is “admittedly impressive”, calling it polar vortex event is hogwash.
“It’s insane,” Cosgrove wrote on his Facebook page. “Poor wording combined with misunderstanding of the term make a mockery out of synoptic meteorology.”
Cosgrove’s argument is that air mass doesn’t meet the “polar vortex” standard – its pressure isn’t low enough and the air isn’t sufficiently cold and truly Arctic in origin (i.e. not below freezing at 5,000 feet). “[On] TWO counts we fail to reach the standard for calling such an upper low a vortex,” he says.

Yep, looks too weak to be exceptionally impressive. Here's my next week. Looks pretty pleasant, especially for the middle of Summer.



If this were "polar vortex" caliber, I'd expect highs in the low to mid 60s.

[American Patriot]

Last night I pulled up my little "Hurricane App" from NOAA and looked at the Atlantic (cuz, I'm considering a trip to Florida soon and it's Hurricane season) and saw a little fluffy thing sitting south of the Caribbean islands. I showed it to the wife and said, "NOAA says less than a 50% chance of developing into a tropical storm."

I said, "This is more than likely going to develop into something significant".

Today NOAA is reporting....

Tropical Storm May Brew in Atlantic This Week

Posted by TheSurvivalGuy on July 30, 2014
Posted in: Climate, News/ Current Events, Weather. Tagged: AccuWeather, Atlantic, Cape Verde Islands, climate, current-events, Leeward Islands, News/ Current Events, the Atlantic Basin, Tropical Storm, Tropical Storm May Brew in Atlantic This Week, Weather, weather climate, Weather map. Leave a comment

By Courtney Spamer



A tropical wave west of the Cape Verde Islands has potential to be the next named tropical storm in the Atlantic Basin.


The wave came off the coast of Africa this weekend and survived the cooler waters and dry air, and has been gradually organizing ever since.


The bright colors in the below video show the abundant tropical moisture and clouds building within the system.




The above animation shows the tropical wave’s development in the Atlantic over the last several hours. This and the thumbnail images courtesy of the NOAA.


The storm is leaving cooler waters, and moving into an area with water temperatures in the lower 80s, which are favorable for development.


The area west of the system also appears to have less wind shear in general, making it even less likely that the storm will be ripped apart by winds higher up in the atmosphere.


According to AccuWeather.com Tropical Expert Dan Kottlowski, the system has a well defined low level circulation center.

“Development is expected to continue through the middle of the week,” said Kottlowski early Wednesday morning.


If this system does continue to develop, it would be the second named storm in the Atlantic this season. “We think this could become Tropical Storm Bertha.”





However, there are two major factor that could inhibit further strengthening. Dry, Saharan dust just to the north of the system could erode the storm’s moisture. There are also a few bands of stronger shear that the system will have to battle.


This means the system’s full development could be slowed slightly as high pressure steers the system towards the northern Leeward Islands.


For the coming weekend, “the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is the area being monitored very closely,” Kottlowski added.


There areas will likely be at risk from this system’s heavier rains and stronger winds, no matter the storms strength. It may even come close to Bermuda for the middle of next week.




The relatively quiet Atlantic tropical season so far in 2014 is not that uncommon. Although the season officially begins on June 1, the most active period does not really get going until mid-August.





At this time is when the waters across the Atlantic are the warmest, and typically, the dry air and strong wind shear tapers off.
More at AccuWeather: Tropical Storm May Brew in Atlantic This Week

[American Patriot]

Phil, heads up. Probably will miss - but might not.


#AceNewsGroup 12:32 on August 1, 2014 Reply | Follow

CARRIBEAN: ‘ Tropical Strom Approaches Caribbean and Storm Warnings Issued ‘

AceWorldNews – CARIBBEAN – August 01 – As Tropical Storm Bertha approaches the Caribbean, storm warnings have been issued for Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgin Islands and other nearby islands, AP said.





The storm’s maximum sustained winds early Friday were near 75kph, and no significant change in strength is expected over the next two days.



Tropical storm warnings are also in effect for Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica, Vieques and Culebra.



A tropical storm watch is in effect for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as Bertha is centered about 270km east of Barbados and is moving west-northwest near 31kph.



#ANS2014